


A Beaten Path

by theramblinrose



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Caryl, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28365753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theramblinrose/pseuds/theramblinrose
Summary: Caryl, ZA. Oneshot.  Daryl followed the beaten path he’d created to see, for himself, that she was happy—that she was always happy.  That was all he wanted.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier
Kudos: 16





	A Beaten Path

AN: This is just a little one shot. It is somewhat based on the Tumblr request by an anon.

I’m working on a few requests. I take them on Tumblr, but I also take them via messages, etc. if you have any that you’d like to send (and are not on Tumblr). 

I own nothing from the Walking Dead.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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He came here often—not every day, and maybe not even once a week, but often. He’d worn a beaten path right to this spot, and Dog knew the way well enough that he needed to only start walking in this direction and the animal would go directly to this place and sit, waiting for Daryl to get there, see what he needed to see, and pat his leg to tell Dog it was time to go home again.

For years, Daryl had been coming here whenever he became acutely aware that too much time had passed since he’d last seen her. He didn’t hold her absences against her, and that wasn’t why he came at all. Instead, he came only to assure himself that she’d gotten busy with her life, and that was why she hadn’t come. 

From this spot, he could see without being seen. He could observe without being observed.

He saw a great many things from this spot.

He saw Carol laughing with Nabila and working in the gardens. She seemed so happy to see the plants growing. She seemed happy, too, to see Nabila growing every time the woman brought a new life into the world.

He saw Carol happy with Henry—watching him as he trained in some strange ways with the weapons he’d chosen to entertain himself with. He saw Carol hugging the boy to her, kissing his head, and simply reveling in the moment of having her son close to her—growing and healthy. He watched as she watched Henry turn into much more of a man than a boy. 

He saw Carol happy with Ezekiel. He saw kisses exchanged, embraces shared, and hands held.

Daryl saw happiness from this spot and, as long as that was what he saw, he left with a warmth in his chest—and he was mostly able to ignore he weight in his stomach.

He would have given anything for that happiness to be his. He would have given anything to be the person who made Carol that happy—who gave her all of that. But he didn’t know how to be that person, so he settled for seeing it, with his own eyes, and at least sleeping with the knowledge that she was safe and happy.

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Daryl walked as quietly as he could through the thick undergrowth that led up to his normal spot outside the walls of the Kingdom. From this angle, none of the “guards” ever saw him. Nobody saw his approach. To attack the Kingdom from this angle would have done very little good to anyone, so there was no need to really protect it too much. Daryl’s desire wasn’t to attack. It was only to watch.

He was able to be mostly quiet thanks to the path that he’d worn there over the years. Dog made more noise than he did, unaware of the secrecy of their trips to the wall. 

Daryl flicked his hood up over his head to keep the cool air of the coming winter from biting at his ears. He buried his hands deep within the pockets of his cloak. He watched his feet as he stepped carefully, only glancing around him from time to time to check his surroundings. 

He was very seldom surprised by anything, so his whole body jolted, practically like he’d been shocked by a bolt of electricity, when he noticed that he was not alone. The hooded figure stepped out of the cluster of trees that grew right up to the Kingdom fences where Daryl normally stood and watched. 

He knew her shape before she ever dropped her own hood. He had memorized everything about her.

“What are you doing out here?” Daryl asked. 

Dog ran right to her. He never forgot her, either. She immediately bent down to greet him before straightening up to face Daryl again.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Carol said.

“I was just passin’ through,” Daryl said.

“I know,” Carol said. “You always do. At the same spot. Almost the same time. I knew you’d come. It’s been two weeks, and you never go longer than that.” 

Daryl’s stomach caught.

“You knew?” 

Carol laughed quietly.

“Every time you come,” she said, nodding her head gently. 

“You stopped comin’ to see me.” 

“You’ve been so obsessed,” Carol said, “with finding Rick. With—I don’t know, Daryl. I don’t even know what you’re doing out there anymore. What you’re trying to prove. I was just in the way.” 

“You’ve never been in the way. Not to me.” 

“Is that why you come?” 

“Checkin’ on you. Makin’ sure you’re OK.” 

Carol stared at him—hard. She nodded.

“Is that the only reason, Daryl?” 

Daryl’s stomach tightened. It wasn’t the only reason, at all, that he came to the same spot outside the fences and watched her live her life. It wasn’t the only reason that he stood there, each time, wishing that it was him who had the right to wrap her in his arms and to kiss her lips. 

“Wanna—make sure you’re…OK,” he repeated. The truth hung in his throat like it was caught on a barb.

“I’m OK,” Carol said. “Are you—OK?” 

Daryl nodded his head. 

“Are you—happy?” Carol asked. 

“Why you ask that?” Daryl asked.

“Maybe because I care. Because I want to know.” 

“I’d be happier if—you’d come to visit,” Daryl said. “You happy?” 

Carol licked her lips and thoughtfully looked into the hole in the fence where Daryl normally peered in and watched her life unfold like something on a screen. Then she looked back at Daryl.

“I think I’d be happier if—you’d be honest with me, Daryl.” 

“I’ve never lied to you.” 

“No—I don’t think you have, but…I don’t think you’ve been honest with me, either.”

Daryl’s stomach flipped and rolled. 

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about…”

“Then, just tell me the truth,” Carol said. “Do you want me to—go back inside the fences, Daryl? Or…would you prefer if I just stayed out here with you?” 

“It’s safer in the fences.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I want you to be happy. You got a life in there.”

“I could have a life out here, too.” 

Daryl’s heart began thundering wildly in his chest. 

“I got nothin’ to offer you.” 

“I’m easy to please,” Carol said. “The only thing I ever wanted from you, Daryl, was the one thing that you never offered.”

“What do you mean?” 

Carol laughed to herself.

“Are you really that blind? I only wanted you. And I thought—for all those years—that you could never want me. That you never would. But now you come here and you stand and you watch me…and I don’t know what you want, Daryl.” 

“Sometimes, we don’t get what we want,” Daryl said.

“Sometimes, that’s because we never ask for it,” Carol countered.

“What about Henry? If you were to leave the Kingdom…”

“Henry would still be my son,” Carol said. 

“Ezekiel?” 

“I would hate to hurt him,” Carol said. 

“But you would?” 

“Maybe I think—I’ve already hurt him by never loving him. Not the way he wants me to love him.” 

“You don’t love him?”

“Not the way he wants. I can’t. I never could.” 

“Why not?”

Because I was already in love,” Carol said, laughing to herself. “With—an asshole that would rather stand out in the cold and freeze to death watching me than…ask me to keep him warm. Ask me if we could—keep each other warm.” 

“Am I that asshole?” Daryl asked, laughing nervously to himself. His whole body trembled with the thought that Carol might actually be saying that she loved him.

“That depends on what you do now,” Carol said. “Your move.” 

Daryl’s legs felt heavy and foreign, but he forced them forward on his beaten path to Carol. For the first time, she was waiting at the end of it. For the first time, he felt her in his arms when he lifted them—every bit as heavy as his legs—and wrapped them around her. For the first time, she kissed his lips, and she didn’t scold him, as he’d so often imagined she might, for his clumsy inability to kiss well.

“I want you to be happy,” he said, when the kiss broke. 

She smiled at him.

“Then you better not let me down,” she teased.


End file.
